Mosques and madrassas have long been monitored in Kashmir, and certainly since the BJP government arrived. Their managing bodies, called waqf committees, usually comprise neighbourhood elders and senior citizens who also look after community graveyards. The local administration and police often invite waqf members for events and informal talks. However, security agencies have increasingly grown suspicious of these bodies’ functioning. A report in April last year quoted government officials as saying that militants were using mosques and madrassas to take shelter and “indoctrinate young minds”. In 2020, the Special Director General of the Central Reserve Police Force accused militants of using mosques to launch attacks and asked mosque committees to prevent this. These concerns, whether genuine or not, were front-loaded in the government’s narrative against militancy, which reinforced its argument of Islamic radicalisation. In that sense, Indian armed forces in the disputed region and the Hindu right across India have consolidated their views vis-a-vis Muslim religious institutions. Mosques and madrassas in several BJP-ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh and Assam, have also faced systematic attacks with the same underlying justification.